EDITORIAL: Crack down on overtime and comp-time cheats

A state comptroller's report released this week revealed that nearly half of the municipalities examined by the office improperly boosted the salaries of top executives with overtime payments that were not approved by public ordinance.

Seventy-one percent of municipalities also awarded executives with a collective total of more than 4,000 hours of compensatory time, also without public approval. In other words, local officials did all of this on behalf of their top execs as quietly as possible, without any public comment or input, even though it was illegal to do so.

That shouldn't remotely surprise anyone, given the widespread abuse of power and taxpayer money that we constantly see throughout New Jersey, by both parties, in countless ways.

The investigation included only 14 government operations, primarily municipalities, but found six - nearly 43 percent - abusing the overtime system in some fashion. The comp time exploitation - Toms River was among the abusers - was even more severe.

That's a small sample size, covering 2010 and 2011, but it's undoubtedly reflective of a broader trend. Considering New Jersey's 500-plus municipalities, it's fair to guess that hundreds of governing bodies are padding compensation for pals while doing their best to keep the public in the dark.

Chalk another one up for the absolute necessity of increased transparency and a wide-open government - and for broader action by the state attorney general to penalize those who broke the law, and to ensure the abuses are ended statewide.

The types of abuses detailed in the report varied. Some executives signed off on their own overtime pay despite dubious justification. That's outrageous. And some of the comp-time awards violated municipalities' own policies aside from the absence of public input.

The effect of the comp-time claims was to greatly increase cash buyouts as employees left their jobs.

These sorts of machinations among officials doling out favors to friends are commonplace in New Jersey, and too often dismissed as the way the game is played.

Those who benefit will privately justify the cheating as insignificant in the larger scheme - or even worse, they'll pretend that they're merely doing what everyone else does, and has done in the past.

It's a disingenuous rationale, and it all adds up, costing taxpayers a lot of extra, unnecessary money. And it's the highest-salaried municipal executives who are cashing in.

Some of the municipalities cited in the report have reportedly said that they will now adopt appropriate measures to award overtime and comp time. Maybe. But it shouldn't be left to chance. The report should be turned over to the attorney general for a more comprehensive investigation into the problem, and prosecutions of those responsible for the theft of taxpayer dollars.

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EDITORIAL: Crack down on overtime and comp-time cheats

A state comptroller's report released this week revealed that nearly half of the municipalities examined by the office improperly boosted the salaries of top executives with overtime payments that

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